Mechanisms for sharing frequency spectrum among various applications statically typically allocate a portion of the spectrum to each of the applications within a service area. This allocation cannot be undone without disabling the applications. Also, current mechanisms do not take into consideration the suitability of the allocated spectrum for serving a specific application.
Hence, current spectrum management approaches suffer from the following drawbacks:
Current algorithms do not allow dynamic sharing of spectrum between applications supported in a service area.
The algorithms used do not take into account the specific communications requirements associated with each specific application that is using spectrum. For example, the quality of a band of spectrum may be suitable for one application but not for another at any given instant of time. Hence, spectrum statically allocated to a specific application may not be the most suitable spectrum for that application.
Once allocated to an application, spectrum cannot be deallocated without disabling the application. If the application designates a portion of, or the entire spectrum allocated to it as unusable, that spectrum is wasted even though that spectrum may have been useful for some other application within the service area.
The characteristics of spectrum change over time. Hence, if some specific spectrum is suitable for the use of an application currently, it may not be suitable over all the time period that it is allocated to the application, resulting in poor service to the application's users over time. The present static spectrum allocation mechanisms do not characterize spectrum characteristics by Time of Day (TOD) and intelligently determine spectrum usability for different TODs.
An individual application may have the ability to shrink its spectrum usage and free up spectrum for the use of other higher priority applications within the service area by reducing or denying service to some of its users. Current spectrum management mechanisms do not allow this dynamic spectrum usage adjustment.
Thus, there is a need for a method and system of frequency spectrum management that provides for dynamic spectrum usage adjustment among applications on a shared medium.